I am passionate about our educational system because I am from a family of educators. My mother and two sisters are Dade County public school educators, my father a former college professor, and brother a high school headmaster. Students today will soon enter a global economy that requires competing for jobs around the world. We must transform our schools to a vision of innovation, knowledge and values. The bureaucracy and costs of administrating the "system" has sapped vital resources from of our classroom teachers. Power must be returned to our local communities and to our teachers. We must also address the root cause of why so many of our kids are failing in the classroom - we have removed character development and values as a vital component of our education system. Children without purpose or a sense of integrity that arises from a strong character, are left to flounder in a bureaucratically run school system. We must get back to the true intention of education: developing both knowledge and character.